


on a string

by cavalreapers



Category: Kill la Kill
Genre: Agender Character, Eye Horror, Eyes sewn shut, Gen, Slightly sexualized gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 18:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1559582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cavalreapers/pseuds/cavalreapers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shiro stitches Uzu's eyes shut - no anesthetic, because they need to feel this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on a string

**Author's Note:**

> agender shiro using they/them pronouns. uzu is trans, but ... that doesn't really come up. i'm gross. slightly kismessy, for homestucks.
> 
> crossposted from my uzu blog.

For all the silence in the lab, Uzu can’t so much as hear Shiro’s breathing over the hammering of his own heart. That _beatbeatbeating_ of it against his ribs goes in time with a mantra. _Atone, atone, atone_ , it says.

The drama of the atmosphere — lab table, white fluorescents burning overhead like they’re in an operating room — is not lost on either of them.

They pull the thread taut, and show him the needle. Shiro was seemingly skeptical at first at Uzu’s request, but their sense of duty measures up to his own.

He can’t tell what their expression tells.

Maybe Shiro says something; maybe Uzu nods in affirmation. They certainly pinch his eyelids together with a tailor’s steady hand, they certainly press the needle through.

It might be easier to be a coward, but he never has been. Uzu gasps, tenses on the table and scrapes his nails against the surface. Shiro breathes deep and now he can hear it, sharp.

The first push proves to be the hardest, the sweetest. It stings constant but not consistent; the thread smaller than the awful stretch of the needle’s eye, but burning hotter. Uzu grits his teeth and presses his nails into his palm. After the fourth stitch by Iori’s count, a line of blood leaks from the corner of his eye.

"Breathe." they remind him, stern and impartial at once. Uzu exhales on their order, but it rolls to a stop — a pained groan at the next stitch. His nails clack and scrape on steel.

He tells himself he needs to feel every bit of this, and he hisses at the slide of the thread. Again and again it bites, and it seems a little easier to breathe in a proper rhythm once their needle approaches the opposite corner. The trickle of blood from his eye reaches its end, makes a miniscule mess in his hair.

"You’re doing better." they murmur, digits pausing for just a second. Their next statement is one he doesn’t anticipate, "What if I mess up, Sanageyama?"

“ _Don’t_.” he gasps, breathing hard. Shiro has reached the end of those stitches, and Uzu thanks God. The pain and the quiet way they speak and move to wipe away his blood … It burns holes in him, too.

They hum a note of assent, but speak with mirth, “On your orders.”

Shiro snips and ties and snips again. The thumb that brushes across Uzu’s eyelid isn’t as gentle as it was before, and he hisses at the pain.

"You can take all sorts of beatings, but you can’t take this?"

He hears them circle around to his other side. “Can’t expect me to be completely silent, Iori.”

"You’re arching your back and whining like a dog in heat."

Before he can protest, they pierce his eyelids without preamble. A gasp rips out of him, sharp as that pain and he arches his back even further.

They press a hand at his sternum in the pause, leveling his back with the table again. He vows to stay still, and so he does when they continue. It only comes out in harsh breathing, in clenched fists, the occasional hitch of an exhale.

_Snip, tie, snip_ — it ends with Uzu realizing his darkness.

Shiro gives him a moment to adjust, to bring his breath and pulse back to baseline.

"No one can deny your resolve, at least." they say evenly, patting his bruised side. He sits upright, wiping tenderly at the bloody tracks.

Even as he flexes his hands, unseeing, unspeaking, it trickles into him slowly.

Uzu had his pride stripped and his humility stitched into him. It just remains for Satsuki’s judgment.


End file.
